Archaeologist and Director of Liberal Studies at the University of Louisville

John R. Hale, a native of Indiana, earned his B.A. at Yale in 1973 and his Ph.D. at Cambridge in 1979, both degrees in Archaeology. His archaeological fieldwork and research projects include studies of Bronze Age Scandinavian watercraft; prehistoric sites in the Ohio River Valley; the Roman villa of Torre de Palma in Portugal; development of a dating method for ancient mortar and concrete using AMS radiocarbon analysis; investigations of Greek oracle sites in Greece, Turkey, and Albania; a search for Phoenician harbors on the Portuguese coast; and deep-submergence surveys in quest of ancient shipwrecks in the Aegean Sea and the eastern Mediterranean. Professor Hale has published reports on his research in Antiquity, Journal of Roman Archaeology, Scientific American, and other journals; and his fieldwork has been featured in documentaries on the Discovery and History channels. He is currently Director of Liberal Studies at the University of Louisville. When his first book, Lords of the Sea: The Epic Story of the Athenian Navy and the Birth of Democracy, was published in 2009, The New York Times reviewer called him “an intellectually serious historian who knows how to tell war stories.” He is currently working on a book about the Greek and Persian Wars for Oxford University Press. Professor Hale is a long-time member of the Archaeological Institute of America, and served as President of the AIA’s Kentucky local society for a number of years. He served as Norton Lecturer for the AIA (2009-10), and has lectured to excellent reviews on several previous AIA-sponsored voyages in the Mediterranean.